


Destination Unknown

by alternatealto



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M, M/M, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:57:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatealto/pseuds/alternatealto
Summary: Wilson is determined not to screw up his relationship with Sam this time around.  But suddenly he has someone else on his mind -- the only problem is, he doesn't know who.





	1. Dreamer and the Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my LiveJournal in 2010; currently available here or at my Dreamwidth account.

  
He was having dinner with Sam, a cozy, intimate dinner at an upscale restaurant, when he felt it start.  And his instant thought was,  _No, dammit, not again.  Not this time.  Not now._  He buried the feeling far, far, down inside himself, tamped the earth down hard over it, and piled rocks on top.  Then he smiled warmly at Sam, covering her hand with his and looking into her eyes just the way he’d been doing two minutes before.  Just the same way.  
  
The only difference was that it had happened, and that he knew it, even though he pretended not to know.  
  
Hours later, strolling back to the car after the movie, with Sam clinging to his arm and laughing a little, he was able to persuade himself that it had been a passing thing, just a change of mood.  When she suggested walking a little further to the  _gelateria_  up the street from the parking lot, he agreed with enthusiasm and sat close to her on the little café chairs, intertwining his fingers with hers under the table.  She smiled and nudged her chair a little nearer to his, offering a spoonful of her  _fior de latte_  in exchange for one of his  _gianduja_ , chatting about the movie.   
  
And he felt it again, just the tiniest twinge, subtle but unmistakable:   as if somewhere, deep down inside him, something small but vital had given way.  There was no point in denying it any longer, it had happened, was happening.  He was too familiar with the signs, knew himself too well to pretend otherwise to himself, although he kept up the pretense to Sam with practiced ease all the way home and all through their lovemaking.  
  
Then he lay next to her, listening as her breathing steadied into sleep, and feeling  the mix of sorrow and anger and guilt and love and just plain confusion that he’d known he would feel since that first moment back at the restaurant.  He lay awake, letting the emotions wash through him:  so familiar, so exciting, so despised.   It was here, it was happening, there was nothing he could do about it.  There was only one thing that was different this time.  
  
_Who?  Who the hell is she?_  
  
Because this was the way it always started.  Someone, some woman somewhere, caught his attention even for just an instant.  It could be anything about her: a smile, the curve of her throat as she turned her head, the quick competence of her hands as she worked, the sway of her hips as she walked away from him, the smooth slope of her calves down to her ankles.   _Something_  always drew his eye, stayed in his thoughts afterwards, or popped back into mind hours or days after he’d seen her.  And once it happened, that was that.  The rest of it followed in an almost ridiculously orderly sequence: chance encounters, casual conversations and “accidental” touches, followed by not-so-accidental touches and not-so-casual conversations.  A kiss (or two or three), then more, then much more.  Then a fight (but not with her, naturally) followed by a suddenly-vacant apartment, hardly noticeable in the excitement of a new romance.     
  
The only relationship that hadn’t followed this pattern was the one with Amber.   _She_  had approached  _him_ ; she was the one who had initiated the sequence.  He’d been amused by that at first, then more interested and then, before he really understood what was happening, deeply and sincerely in love.   A love that had satisfied him, that had completed him in ways and in places within himself that he hadn’t known were lacking.  There had never been any question of the kind of thing happening with Amber that was happening with Sam right now.  If Amber had lived, if he hadn’t lost her, they would still be together and he would have been more than content to stay with her forever.  But she was gone, and he was with Sam again.  For now.  Until whoever it was he’d noticed drew his attention once more.  
  
Only this time, he couldn’t recall noticing  _anyone_.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
He woke with his arm around Sam, his nose buried in her hair – and with the sense that he’d been dreaming about someone else, someone quite different.  He stayed motionless, his eyes closed, as he tried to bring back fragments of his dream and see if it would show him whoever it was who’d caught his eye.  But nothing was left of it, except a vague impression of dark hair and a smile, so it was probably nothing to do with his problem after all, because he had a definite preference for blondes.  
  
The alarm buzzed, and Sam reached a sleepy hand to slap the snooze button, then turned to kiss him drowsily.  He shoved the dream aside and kissed back, then clambered out of bed, leaving her to sleep a little longer while he showered and shaved.  He’d always been the earlier riser of the two of them, and it was a pattern they had settled back into without comment when they’d started living together. As he went through his morning routine, he mentally ransacked his memory for anything, any least hint, of something he might have noticed about a nurse, a fellow, a clinic patient, or any other woman in recent days.  Nothing came to mind.  The only thing he remembered attracting his attention to anyone recently was the way the blue tie House had worn the other day had set off his eyes.    
  
House’s tie . . .  It was odd, seeing House in shirt and tie and white coat these days.  Apparently he was really anxious for his relationship with Cuddy to work, because in the past month he’d taken to showing up more and more frequently dressed in conventional hospital attire.  What was even more surprising was that he’d trimmed his beard and mustache to something approaching tidiness.  He was often on time for work lately, too, Wilson mused, probably as a result of riding in with Cuddy sometimes instead of using the Repsol.  Wilson found himself smiling a little as he remembered House’s loud and frequent declarations that people didn’t change.  He ought to snap a picture of House as he looked these days and put it in a frame alongside another shot of the diagnostician as he’d looked some time back, with  _“So People Don’t Change, Huh?”_ as a caption underneath.  
  
That would be funny – he could leave it on House’s desk, or tuck it away among the numberless toys on top of House’s credenza and see how long it took him to notice.  The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him.  It had been a long time since either of them had pranked the other, and he missed that.  He wouldn’t be able to get the shot himself without being obvious, but maybe he could bribe Chase or Taub to snap a picture of House with a phone camera and email it to him.  He already had one of House from several months back that he’d been waiting for a chance to use – a shot of the man sacked out in the Eames chair in his office, wrinkled, rumpled, and drooling.    
  
Wilson was grinning as he slapped on aftershave and went to the kitchen to get the coffee started.  It wasn’t until Sam came to collect a cup and a kiss that he realized he still couldn’t remember who the Other Woman was.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
Whoever she was, she was certainly taking her own sweet time to re-appear in his life.  It had been over two weeks since that first warning twinge, and he’d seen nobody who might conceivably be the one who’d caused it.  In the meantime, he was able to assure anyone who might feel like asking that things were going fine with Sam, couldn’t be better.  There were days when he believed it:  after all, nothing had actually  _happened_ , except that he knew the Next One was out there somewhere.  And it wasn’t like he  _wanted_  his relationship with Sam to fail.  On the contrary, it annoyed and upset him that seemingly he couldn’t control his wandering eyes even when he didn’t know where they were wandering.  He’d really hoped that the two of them could do it this time; he’d put a lot of effort and energy and attention into making it work.  He hated feeling that it was already sabotaged by someone he couldn’t even identify.  Twice in the past several days he was sure he’d dreamed about her – once he’d even awakened from a dream of kissing her, only to find when he was fully awake that the dream had vanished again. He still had no idea what she looked like.  
  
Other things actually  _were_  going well.  Taub had come through with the picture, a great shot of House in his white coat, shaved and tidy and with his head cocked  to one side and that bright-eyed expression on his face that meant he was about to come out with some smartass remark or other:  a look that Wilson had always privately thought made the other man almost absurdly  handsome.  As a bonus, House had been wearing yet another blue tie, and the camera had caught his eyes when they were just about as brilliantly cerulean as they could be.  Wilson couldn’t have  _posed_  House to get a better contrast with the other portrait, and the ridiculous price the framer was charging to matte, caption, and frame the two was well worth it.  Once House had seen the result, Wilson had every intention of stealing it back and keeping it on his own desk.  Assuming, of course, that House didn’t simply pitch it off the balcony to the peril of passers-by.  
  
There was a brief knock on his office door before it opened.  Wilson looked up, expecting to see Mr. Sanchez-Ortiz, his eleven o’clock appointment.  Instead, it was House, cane in one hand and a patient file in the other.  “Need a consult,” he announced briefly, tossing the file at Wilson and settling onto the couch, his long, graceful fingers tugging fretfully at the tie around his neck.    
  
Wilson smiled, watching.   Then he shook the series of images free of the folder and held one up to the light, frowning a little, then looking at two more to be sure of what he was seeing. “Hamartoma,” he said.  “Benign, of course, but from the location I’d say it needs to come out.”  
  
“Yep.  Boring,” House agreed, “but she was sure it was something else.”  
  
“‘She,’ the patient?”  
  
“No, ‘she’ the Dean of Medicine.”  
  
Wilson looked up, alarmed.  “Is this Cuddy’s file?”  
  
“Of course not, idiot.  Patient’s name is right there in front of you.  57-year-old male, presented to the Clinic with chronic breathing problems.  No insurance, no previous medical history.”  
  
“And he ended up in your area . . . why?  You’d think a mass in the lungs would be referred to Oncology, not Diagnostics.  Especially something this obvious.”  
  
“I just  _did_  refer it to Oncology.”    
  
Wilson looked at him doubtfully.  “I . . . see.  So, if this isn’t a consult, then what is it?”  
  
“Nothing.  Unless you want to go to lunch with me later.”  
  
“You buying?”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“Just checking.  Sure, lunch is fine.  One o’clock sound good?”   House nodded, and Wilson  tossed the file back to the other man.  “Take it down to Robbins and tell him we’ll need to schedule the surgery.  I assume the patient’s been admitted?”  
  
“Yeah.  And – ” House dumped the file back onto Wilson’s desk, then grabbed his cane to rise –  “he is now officially Oncology’s patient.  Run your own errands.  See you around one.”    
  
As House reached for the doorknob to let himself out, Wilson said, “Oh, by the way–”  
  
House turned to look back, and Wilson added, “Nice tie.”  
  
House’s expression didn’t change, but he closed the door after himself with unnecessary force.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
  
By one o’clock the hospital cafeteria was crowded, but they managed to snag one of the booths along the wall, Wilson with a meatball sub, fries, and a small salad.  House had stuck to his favorite reuben, adding two dishes of pudding and a slice of cake.  He was scowling as he grabbed the two dill spears nestled next to the sandwich and tossed them onto the table.  “I keep telling them no pickles.  I think they put them on just to spite me.”  
  
“Really? I can’t imagine anyone doing something like that,” Wilson said in a falsely-innocent voice.  House, his mouth full, simply rolled his eyes.    
  
“By the way,” Wilson continued in a more serious tone, “you might as well have bought my lunch – you owe me twenty bucks.”  
  
“You had two of them today?  Seriously?” At Wilson’s nod, House looked away for a moment, the expression on his face unreadable.  Then he shook his head and reached for his wallet, handing a twenty-dollar bill across the table without comment. Wilson tucked it away in his own wallet in the same silence, and concentrated for a few minutes on eating his salad.  When he looked up again, he found House’s gaze still on him, still with that odd look on his face.  Then House glanced past him across the cafeteria, and his expression changed.  A smile hovered around his mouth, his eyes softened.  Wilson didn’t need to turn to know who was approaching.  
  
“Hey,” Cuddy said as she walked up to their table.  Her expression mirrored House’s for a moment, then she sat down next to him as he slid over to make room.  She looked at Wilson and smiled.  “Dr. Wilson.  How’s Sam?”    
  
“Fine,” he answered, smiling back.  But the smile and the answer were both automatic, because Wilson was suddenly and unexpectedly dealing with an upsurge of – of  _something_ , some feeling he couldn’t identify, that had started as soon as she’d sat down next to House.  Some powerful emotion, forcing its way up from deep within him, uncontrollable.    
  
Luckily, the two of them were looking at each other now, so if Wilson’s face changed at all they didn’t notice.  Wilson, involved in his internal battle, found himself staring absently in front of him at the sheen and soft fullness of Cuddy’s hair.    
  
Dark hair.  
  
_Cuddy’s_  dark hair.  
  
_Oh, shit.   Oh, no.  No, it can’t . . . it can’t be.  No. _    
  
But it  _was_ , it had to be –  because that unfamiliar emotion that was welling up inside him was suddenly all too easily identifiable as nothing more nor less than pure, green-eyed jealousy.  
  
“Wilson?”  House was looking at him, now, frowning a little.  “Look, I know they’re gorgeous, but they’re taken, all right?”    
  
Wilson snatched himself back from the fog surrounding him.  For once he was grateful for his tendency to blush easily, because he could feel the redness spreading over his face, and House’s teasing could account for it.  He groped for some way to answer without sounding . . . without letting House . . .  _oh, god . . ._  
  
“You ass,” he found himself saying, in a perfectly normal tone, pulling an easy smile out of a pocket somewhere and fixing it carefully in place.    
  
“Hey, you’re cute when you turn all pink that way,” House replied.  But his face had relaxed back into a smile; it was clear he hadn’t meant anything serious in teasing Wilson for staring at Cuddy.  
  
“Yeah, well, you’d turn pink, too, if you’d just realized you forgot you were supposed to go to lunch with your girlfriend,” Wilson retorted.  “I’d better go call.  Here – ” he picked up his sandwich and fries and dumped them onto House’s plate – “you would have gotten most of the fries anyway.  Have a good lunch, you two,” and he slid out of the booth and headed for the cafeteria door, reaching for his phone as he went just to add verisimilitude to his sudden retreat.    
  
He didn’t look back.  He couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Cuddy staring into House’s eyes again.  
  
  
 * * * * *   
  
  
  _Damn.  Shit.  God fucking dammit straight to hell._  
  
Wilson wasn’t generally given to profanity, even in the privacy of his own thoughts.  But nothing else seemed like an adequate response to the situation he was in now.  
  
_Why??  Why the hell did it have to be Cuddy, of all people?  Oh god, I can’t deal with this._    
    
He’d gone to find somewhere he could sit and think, eventually using his master key to let himself into one of the storage rooms in Oncology.  Hopefully nobody would need anything from here until he’d managed to get himself somewhat back under control.   He sat down with a bump on a broken desk chair that nearly tilted him off onto the floor before he caught his balance.    
_  
What the hell am I going to do?  This can’t happen.  It can’t._    
  
And just  _why_  was it happening?  He couldn’t remember having noticed anything in particular about Lisa Cuddy, none of the kinds of details that usually remained with him.  She was pretty enough, but she’d never really been his style, and while he admired her there had always been a hardness about her that wasn’t something he found appealing in a relationship.  He’d encouraged House to try for her because it was clear his friend thought she was what he wanted, and so far he seemed to be trying to make it work.  Now that Wilson had seen the relationship in action he was beginning to have doubts – their behavior in his office the day they’d announced it to him had just seemed a little . . . off.  And all the arguing and yelling since then – if it had been any two other people on the staff carrying on that way there would have been disciplinary measures.  Privately, he didn’t really give them high odds of pulling it off, but it was none of his business.    
  
_None_  of his business.   _House_  had Cuddy; he, Wilson, had Sam.   _And that’s how it’s going to stay,_  he told himself, gritting his teeth grimly.   _I am not going to screw up my romance, House’s romance, and my working relationship with my boss because I’m suddenly attracted to her.  If I even am.  _ Doubt came over him again.  But then . . . the dream, the dark hair, the smile – she really did have a nice smile, now that he thought about it – and the unmistakable, bitter bite of jealousy he’d felt, watching them from across the table.  It was all too confusing.  Better to just pretend none of it had ever happened at all.  
  
And, in service to that idea . . .   
  
He stood up and pulled out his phone.  “Hey,” he said, playfully, when Sam answered.  “I’m looking for a gorgeous woman to have lunch with.  Want to meet me at Chez Panisse?”  
  
Five minutes later, he was able to wave cheerfully at House and Cuddy, who were just exiting the cafeteria as he headed out the door to his car.  
  
  
* * * * *    
  
Anyone who knew Wilson as well as, say, House knew him, would be quick to point out that when he wanted to, Wilson could be the King of Denial.  In fact, House had pointed it out to him on more than one occasion.  What he might not have realized was that there were times when denial was more than just a coping mechanism:  it was the only way you had to stay sane, especially when you had a friend like House in your life.  Phrases like, “I did  _not_  just see that”, “ _Please_  tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing”, or even the desperate “I’m not  _listening_  to you . . .  !” come to your lips all too easily in such circumstances.  If House thought Wilson spent too much time in denial, it might have been because he failed to take into account the number of occasions when his own actions prompted the other man’s retreat from reality.  
  
But now, Wilson thought, all that practice was proving useful in ways he could never have anticipated.   He’d started dreaming about  _her_  again, usually in the mornings right before he woke up, and even though the dream images vanished as soon as he was fully conscious he knew perfectly well what they must have been from the, er . . .  _results_  they left with him.    
_  
I am not in love with Cuddy.  I am not in love with Cuddy,_ had become a regular morning chant.  Some mornings, of course, he was able to divert his . . . excess energy in Sam’s direction, but that wouldn’t work  _every_  morning.  And on the mornings when it did work, he was left feeling . . . unsatisfied.  All too familiar, that feeling – as if some part of him had already moved on, and nothing he could do would call it back.    
  
But he wasn’t giving in without a fight, dammit.  So, on the other days, he focused his attention on every single thing he disliked about the Dean of Medicine, from her overly-cautious approach when it came to new or risky treatments to her tendency to dress as if she had a second, far less reputable job to go to after dark.  And the more he did this, drawing on every least thing about her that had ever annoyed him, the more quickly his unwelcome erection would fade.  It was progress, of a kind.  
  
At work, he combined Denial with Avoidance, subtly finding ways to keep his distance from the lobby and the Dean of Medicine’s office:  sending Missy on errands he might normally have done himself, or using the phone if he needed to discuss things with Cuddy, rather than following his usual face-to-face approach.  He started brown-bagging lunch and eating in the Oncology Lounge, under the pretense of trying to lose a little weight, and he scheduled his Clinic shifts for the early mornings, before Cuddy and House arrived for work, even though it meant getting up a bit earlier.  
  
With all this studied practice to deceive, he hadn’t lost sight of the fact that since they were together so much more often now, staying away from Cuddy meant staying away from House.  The diagnostician might be fairly distracted for the time being by the “ooh, shiny!” phase of his new relationship, but House had an inconvenient way of noticing exactly the things you wanted him not to clue in to, and at the worst possible times.  It was of the utmost importance that he not feel that Wilson was avoiding him, because that would lead to House trying to find out why, and that would lead to . . .   
  
Luckily for Wilson, the prank he’d been planning would help in that regard.  The picture had arrived from the framer’s shop yesterday, and was now hidden in a bottom drawer of his desk.  It had come out better than he’d hoped:  the chocolate-and-cobalt colors the framer had chosen for the matting accentuated the darkness of House’s hair in the first shot and the blue of his eyes in the second.  The caption Wilson ordered had been laser-cut into the darker matte in a graceful script that revealed the bright blue beneath it.  The whole thing had definitely been worth the price.  
  
Thinking about it, Wilson was privately glad that Taub had sent him that second picture via email; it meant he’d always have a copy of it if (as he fully expected) House ended up destroying this one.  He’d add it to the slideshow screen saver on his laptop; or, no, he’d use it as wallpaper – it was just that good a picture of the man.  And it was guaranteed to annoy him, too – so, two birds.   
  
The only problem with the whole idea was that if he left it in House’s office for House to find, then Wilson wouldn’t be there to see his reaction.  And since the reaction was the whole point of the prank, it would be a real shame to miss it.  He sat at his desk, holding the frame in his hands, pondering.  The only way, really, to be there for the unveiling was to just walk into House’s office and give it to him, but that was . . .  anticlimactic.  Surprise was as much a part of this as annoyance, after all – there had to be a way to combine the two . . .   
  
_Maybe,_  he thought to himself,  _I went about this the wrong way.  I should have had the pictures blown up into posters and hung them in the lobby, the way he did to me._   He still found himself turning pink every time he remembered that particular prank.  Although, now he thought of it, if House’s reaction to the framed pictures was . . . satisfactory, there wasn’t any reason the prank couldn’t be extended.  House, after all, had had no mercy on Wilson about those ten lousy minutes in that awful film.  Really, he was due a return of the favor.  
  
Wilson was still considering ways and means when the problem abruptly solved itself.  He’d just set the picture down when he heard someone opening his office door, and he looked up as House came in, hanging his cane on the edge of Wilson’s desk, and dropping onto the couch.  He was wearing his white coat again, Wilson noticed, with a denim-blue shirt underneath it, and another tie.  Red, this time.  It warmed his skin tone, while the medium blue shade of the shirt had the effect of making his normally bright blue eyes appear darker, more sapphire by contrast.  All in all, it was a good look for him.  
  
“What’s up?” Wilson asked, when House had been sitting there silently for almost half a minute.  
  
“Nothing,” House replied with a grimace, “and I’m trying to keep it that way.”  
  
“You know,” Wilson said, musingly, “when it comes to you, there’s so much ‘nothing’ that could be going on that I’m going to have to guess which one it is this time.  ‘Nothing’ as in you don’t have a patient?  ‘Nothing’ as in you’re trying to avoid Clinic hours?  ‘Nothing’ as in – ”  
  
“ ‘Nothing’ as in she and I aren’t arguing today.  Yet.”  
  
_Great,_ Wilson thought,  _this probably means I can expect her here any minute, since he’s obviously trying to avoid her.  Thanks, House._   “Which . . . implies that there’s something for you two to argue  _about_ ,” he replied.  “Care to share, or would telling me about it somehow violate your personal Manliness Code?”  
  
“She wants me to move in.”  
  
Wilson felt that  _twinge_ , the one he’d spent time chanting to himself nearly every morning to try and avoid feeling. He kept his face neutral, working for just the hint of concern he’d be showing if things were normal.  
  
“That’s . . . a little soon, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah.  It’s . . . I don’t think I’m ready for it.  Not . . . not yet.  But she’s – ”  
  
“Pushing?”  
  
“Yeah.  Part of me is saying I’m an idiot.”  
  
Wilson’s lips twitched.  “Bet I know which part that is,” he agreed, shooting House an amused glance.   But then he stopped, because House wasn’t smiling.  He had taken his cane from Wilson’s desk and was fingering the curve of the handle and staring at the carpet in front of him, frowning slightly.  Then he looked at Wilson for a moment before returning his gaze to the floor.  
  
“How do you know it’s working?” he asked, abruptly.  “You’ve been with Sam . . . six months?  Seven?”  
  
“About that long,” Wilson admitted.  
  
“How . . . what makes you sure it’s . . . right?  I mean . . . back – back when you were married to her, it obviously didn’t work.  Why are you so sure it can work this time?”  
  
Wilson, not always quick on the uptake in situations like this, had a sudden rare moment of clarity.   _He’s not actually asking about me and Sam,_  he realized,  _he’s trying to use us as some kind of gauge of how likely he and Cuddy are to make a go of it.  They didn’t . . . work . . . the first time around, either._   The jealous resentment flashed up in him again, and he crushed it back down, hard.  He had to get a handle on this.  He watched as House’s hands twisted around the head of his cane, fascinated by the way the long fingers, never still, were yet always graceful:  beautiful, actually.  Then he realized House was still waiting for him to answer.  
  
“You . . . I don’t think anyone’s ever ‘sure’, House,” he answered carefully.  “You have to . . . work at it.  Keep trying, keep . . . believing whatever problems there are can be worked out.”  He was still looking at the other man’s hands.   _He touches her with those hands_, Wilson thought,  _uses them to –_    He caught himself, hoping his face hadn’t changed.  
  
“You didn’t try that “believing” stuff the first time?” House asked.  
  
Wilson sighed and looked at him directly.  “I was –  _we_ were – a lot younger then.  It all . . . everything that happened was  _new_ , we didn’t have any real way of knowing which kinds of things were real crises and which ones just  _felt_  that way.  And after a while, they  _all_  felt that way.”  
  
“But they don’t now.”  
  
“We . . . work things out,” Wilson said carefully.   _Or we did, until this . . . whatever the hell this thing is that won’t leave me alone came along._  
  
“What would you do if you were me?” House asked suddenly.  “Should I . . . go ahead?  Just dive into the deep end and hope I figure out how to swim before I hit the bottom?  Is that what you’d do?”  
  
“Since when do you model what you do on  _me?_ ” Wilson asked, genuinely astonished.  
  
“Since I don’t have any other models, idiot.  All your marriages might have ended up in the trash, but at least you  _had_  them.”  House looked so lost for a moment that Wilson couldn’t still the involuntary impulse of sympathy for him.   _But – dammit, I’m still not the person you should be asking!_  he thought a second later.  _For about a thousand reasons!_  
  
“It . . . depends,” he said, feeling his way cautiously through the invisible thicket of contradictory emotions that seemed to have sprung up in the room all around him.  “Do you feel pressured?  Is she . . . not listening when you try to tell her why you think it’s too soon?”  
  
“I . . . I’m not sure,” House said, softly.  “Sometimes I think . . . I know she knows what she wants.  I’m just not sure what she wants is . . .”  He trailed off.  
  
“What you want?” Wilson offered.  
  
“No.   _Me._ ”  
  
Wilson’s expression must have conveyed his confusion, because House drew a deep breath and explained, “She wants a home, a baby . . . and a partner.  And she’s not – she thinks if she’s ready for that, then I should be, too.  And she feels like she’s already waited too long, so she . . . wants to hurry things.  I’ve suddenly turned into the Big Romance from her youth, and now we’re supposed to catch up on everything we missed.”  
  
_Uh-oh._   “Um . . . is  _she_  the Big Romance from  _your_  past?” Wilson asked, carefully not looking at the dark, tangled twist of jealousy crouching inside him, not wanting to know how he felt about House’s likely answer.  He kept his gaze steadily on House.  
  
House was looking at the floor again, hands white-knuckled on the cane.  “We were in college.  We dated a couple of times, we had sex once or twice.  That was it.  But she’s built it up into something more.”  
  
“And you’re not comfortable with that.”  
  
“Would you be?” House asked sharply.    
  
Wilson considered this.  If Sam – if  _any_ of his ex-wives had tried to base a relationship on college memories twenty-five years old, while ignoring more recent history and conveniently forgetting everything else they knew about him . . .  
  
“No,” he said.  
  
“Then . . . you think I – ”  
  
“I think you’re right to want to wait,” Wilson said firmly.   _And I really do think that,_  he assured himself.   _It’s got nothing to do with the way I feel about . . ._  
  
House was looking at him, a hint of relief in his features.  “Okay.  Thanks for the consult, Dr. Wilson.”  He stood up.   
  
Wilson smiled up at him, a genuine smile, not forced.  Standing there in his physician’s white coat, House looked so much like the second picture in the frame on the desk in front of Wilson that it was hard not to smile.    
  
The thought hadn’t any more than crossed his mind when House suddenly reached out to pluck the frame from the desk.  “Hey, this is new.  Pictures of Sam – ?” he began, then broke off as he saw what was actually in the frame.    
  
Wilson ducked his head a little, but kept looking up at the other man mischievously.  “Actually, I had that done for you.  Take it with you,” he started to add, but then stopped uncertainly.  House’s face had changed, his whole expression going stony.    
  
“No,” he said.  There was a crisp finality in his tone; he set the framed photographs back down on Wilson’s desk with a firm snap, and turned for the door.  As it latched behind him, Wilson looked down at the two pictures, with the question engraved beneath them.    
  
Had House’s answer been meant for him, or for . . . ?

 


	2. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's found the answer -- but now there are so many more questions.

  
For a few days after their conversation, Wilson barely saw House at all because Diagnostics had a particularly juicy case, one of the kind that brought out the best in House and let him use all of it: his brilliance, his amazing depth of medical knowledge, his sheer stubborn refusal to give up until he’d hunted down the problem, dragged it from its cave, and slain it.  The fact that the patient had been practically at death’s door by the time she reached House’s department had added urgency to the situation.  No matter how late Wilson was in heading home himself, he always saw the light on in House’s office, and he found it on again when he came back in the morning.  If House was going home, or to Cuddy’s place, it was only for long enough to change clothes, Wilson thought, until on the third or fourth afternoon he passed the DDX room and noticed House in there by himself, wearing scrubs as he stood at the well-scrawled whiteboard.  No, he realized, House hadn’t been leaving the hospital at all.   
  
Wilson paused outside the room, looking at House as he paced slowly back and forth in front of the lists of symptoms and possible causes.  He looked haggard, Wilson thought, even more so than usual at times like this, and his limp was noticeably worse.  Concerned, Wilson pushed open the door and walked in.  
  
“Hey,” he said quietly.  House’s glance paused on him for a moment, as if the other man was considering whether to add him to one of the lists, then he went back to his steady pacing.  Up close, Wilson could see the skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones, and that it was pale and looked oily.  House’s eyes had dulled to a bluish grey, his thinning hair was mashed flat at the back of his head and sticking up at odd angles elsewhere, as if he’d been getting what sleep he could sitting in the Eames chair in his office.  He was licking at his lips as he walked, but they were still dry and chapped.  
  
“House,” Wilson said, when he managed to get his friend’s attention for a moment, “when was the last time you ate anything?”    
  
“Don’t know,” House answered.  An expression of annoyance crossed his face as he stepped around Wilson to continue his monotonous back-and-forth across the room.  “Doesn’t matter, I’m not hungry.”    
  
Wilson looked around the room, expecting to see the usual clutter of takeout and pizza boxes, but the place was abnormally tidy.  “Are your team even here?” he asked.    
  
“Nah.  Chase is with the patient in ICU; I sent the rest of them home to get some sleep.  Nothing  we can do at the moment anyway; she’s stable for now and there’s another batch of tests we’re waiting for results from.”  
  
“Then why don’t you get some food and rest yourself, then?” Wilson asked, exasperated. “You’re not going to do your patient any good if you’re too exhausted to make sense of the results when you get them.  And low blood sugar doesn’t help anybody’s thinking,” he added.  “I'll get you something from the cafeteria.  Unless . . .” he trailed off.  “I mean, has Cuddy . . .?”  
  
House stopped moving, facing away from Wilson, his posture suddenly rigid.  “No.  She’s . . .  She came up here, once, to try to get me to go to lunch with her, but the patient was having a crisis and we were working to get her stabilized; I didn’t have time to eat just then.  When I called her later, she was . . . busy.”  
  
“When was this?” Wilson asked, realizing as he said it that he hadn’t seen the Dean of Medicine on the fourth floor in at least a couple of days.   
  
“I’m not sure.  Maybe . . . Wednesday?”  
  
This was Friday.   _She hasn’t been back since then??_  Wilson thought to himself.   _That’s . . . not good._    “You need to eat,” he insisted, falling back on the immediate problem since there was nothing he could do about House’s relationship anyway.  “Look.  I’m going to the cafeteria and getting you a sandwich and something to drink.  You’re going to eat, you’re going to drink, and then you’re going to sleep for awhile on the sofa in my office.  You need the calories and you need the rest, House,” he insisted, when he saw the other man shake his head slightly.  “If  _you_  collapse, then your patient really has no chance.”    
  
House’s shoulders sagged.  Then, slowly, he turned around. “Okay.”    
  
Wilson started for the door.  In the corridor, looking back, he could see House still standing in the same spot, staring into the distance.  
  
  
* * * * *   
  
“Doctor Wilson, can I have a moment?”  
  
Of all times.  Of  _all_  times for Cuddy to have decided to prowl around the hospital –  _could_  a woman prowl in four-inch heels? – she would have to pick now.  He stopped, and she came up to him.  She looked annoyed, but then that seemed to be her default expression lately.  She also, he thought, looked tired.  
  
“I need you to tell House – ” she began, and Wilson, jolted, stared at her without hearing much of the rest of the sentence.   _She needs me to tell House?  Why the – what’s going on?  She’s the Dean of Medicine, she can pick up the phone and call him.   She’s his girlfriend, she can – _  
  
 _God,_  he realized then,  _they’re fighting.  Again.  Or at least she thinks they are, so it’s back to her old pattern of “Wilson, tell House for me”, “Wilson, get House to do this”, “Wilson, get House to stop that”.   Jesus, she’s annoying when she does this.  
_  
“I’ll tell House,” he agreed when she stopped talking, although since he hadn’t been listening he honestly had no idea of what it was he was supposed to tell him.  “But – if you’ll pardon the question – couldn’t  _you_  just tell him?  I mean . . .”  
  
“He hasn’t been at my place these past three nights,” Cuddy said, her tone turning waspish.  “It seems he prefers his own bed lately, and he doesn’t answer when I call him.”  
  
“He . . . Cuddy, he’s got a case!  He hasn’t been sleeping much at all, you _know_  how he can get when he’s got a patient with something he can’t figure out.  He forgets the rest of the world exists, he ignores the phone unless it’s his team, he barely remembers to  _eat!_   He’s up there now wandering around in scrubs, and I’ve come down to get him something from the cafeteria because apparently he’s been eating even less than he’s been sleeping the past three days.  Haven’t you – ?”  
  
She had the grace to look embarrassed, at least.  “I’ve . . . I’ve been so busy, James.  It’s the end of the quarter, I have reports and inspections and . . . and Rachel’s nanny’s been down with the flu and so has my backup babysitter, and now Rachel’s got it, so I’ve been up every night the past few nights, and I’ve had to cobble together child care all this week, and . . .”  
  
 _And you’re tired and stressed.  I get it.  But you’re also mad at House because he won’t agree to move in with you and be there to help.   You pushed, and he dragged his heels because you pushed, and then he got this case.  You never took into account what it might be like if both of you were overloaded at the same time, did you?_  
  
“ . . . it’s not that I don’t love Greg,” she was saying, her voice going a little ragged.  “It’s just – I tend to forget how high-maintenance he can be.”  
 _  
Because you were never doing much of the maintenance,_ Wilson agreed, suddenly boiling with silent indignation.   _You always delegated it to me, exactly the way you’re doing now!  You figured I’d be keeping an eye on him, so you didn’t have to.  I’m your backup House-sitter, only you never bothered to write it into my job description when you decided to start a relationship with him, so I actually thought you’d be taking on some of the work yourself.  So now we’ve both failed him and he’s been left to look after his patient, his team, and himself without help!_  
  
“Look,” he said at last, “I’ll – pass on your message to him.  Right now, though, I need to get some food into him or he’s going to collapse.  He’s got his patient stable, so once he eats I’m going to see that he gets back to his place and gets a shower and some rest.”  
  
“Okay,” she said, slowly.  “Wilson – ”  
  
“Yeah?” he said, already moving away.  
  
“Thanks.  For – for taking care of him.”    
  
 _I’m not doing it for_ _you._  
  
“Sure.”  He didn’t trust himself to say anything more.  
    
It wasn’t until he was almost to the cafeteria that he realized something he should have noticed earlier.  During his entire conversation with the Dean of Medicine, he’d felt nothing.  Well, not  _nothing_  – he’d certainly felt annoyed and exasperated.  But there had been no magnetism, no chemistry, no spark.  He’d felt no attraction to her, even though he’d awakened that morning with another raging hard-on from dreaming about her.  Or the woman he assumed was her.  
  
 _Maybe I’m over it,_  he thought, hopefully.  _Maybe it was just a phase this time, and it’s finished._  Then he remembered exactly how intense that morning’s dream had been.    
  
But still.  He couldn’t make that dream woman align with the real Lisa Cuddy, and he didn’t even want to try.   _So maybe it isn’t her.  Maybe it’s someone else._    He stood in the corridor for a moment, thinking.  But no other woman came to mind, so he shrugged mentally and went on.  There was definitely a bright side to this:  It couldn’t be Cuddy, so he no longer needed to worry about complications with House.   
  
* * * * *   
  
  
Once in the cafeteria, he ordered House’s favorite reuben, smiling charmingly at the girl as he requested extra fries and no pickles.  Then he added the biggest milkshake they could produce, remembering as an afterthought to order a more normal-sized soda for himself.    
  
When he got back up to Diagnostics, House was pacing again, limping back and forth with his head down.  He paid no attention when Wilson spoke, so the oncologist stepped into his path, holding up the milkshake when House came to a startled stop in front of him.  When House started to tell him to move, Wilson simply shoved the straw between his open lips and said, “Drink.  I got you strawberry, your favorite.  And there’s a reuben and fries over there on the table, and I’m not leaving until you eat them.”  
  
House stared at him for a moment, then his lips closed around the straw and he sucked, his expression suddenly becoming avid as the taste hit him.  “Come on,” Wilson smiled, backing up, using the cup to lead House in the direction of the food.  House followed him to the table, still drinking.  A good third of the shake was gone when he finally let go and sat down; he tore open the sandwich wrapper and began shoving corned beef into his mouth.  Wilson sat down and sipped at his own soda, watching as the reuben and fries disappeared in record time.    
   
A few moments later, House was sucking noisily at the empty straw.  “Here,” Wilson said, and handed him the soda. “You, of all people, should know enough not to let yourself get so dehydrated.  I’ve heard it does bad things to your kidneys.”  
  
House, draining the soda cup, suddenly swivelled in the chair to stare at him, his eyes widening.  “Renal failure,” he said, “what if – ” and scrabbled at the scrubs as if searching for something in a pocket.   Wilson, spotting the phone on the ledge of the white board, got up quickly and grabbed it, tossing it to House, who nodded at him and got up, phone in hand, to begin pacing again.  “Chase.  Have the results from any of the tests come back?  Good.  What’re the numbers for the renal function?  Uh-huh.  Notice anything odd about those?  No, not there, look farther down.  Yeah.  Right. Exactly.  We haven’t been seeing it because her liver’s been masking it, but now that her kidneys are shutting down – uh-huh.  Get her on dialysis, and put her on the transplant list.  No, not kidney,  _liver,_  weren’t you listening?  Right. Bye.”   He put the phone away and looked at Wilson with exhausted triumph.  “We knew about the cirrhosis, but the kidney failure is due to a whole different set of factors.  We were trying to find one diagnosis for two conditions, but based on the test results that was a logical assumption, until now.”  
  
“So you’ve done it again,” Wilson said, smiling.  
  
“Yeah.  At least now we know what to do; if she gets a liver she’s got a good chance.”  He yawned suddenly, hugely, stood blinking at Wilson for a moment, wavering back and forth as he stood, and then yawned again.  
  
“C’mon,” Wilson told him, “there’s a nice, comfy couch in my office with ‘Reserved for Dr.  Gregory House’ written on it in invisible ink.  I’ll turn off my phone and lock the door – I told Cuddy I was taking you back to your place, so she won’t try to reach you here.  Give me that,” he finished, taking the cell phone from House’s unresisting grasp and turning it off.  
  
He ended up having to support House for even the short distance between the DDX room and Wilson’s office.  Really, he thought affectionately, lowering the nearly inert form to the couch, it was almost like dealing with the man when he was drunk, except that exhaustion didn’t have the tendency to make him truculent and argumentative that alcohol did.  House sat on the edge of the couch, scrubbing at his face like a fretful small child for a moment, then simply fell asleep sitting up and would have toppled face-forward onto the floor if Wilson hadn’t caught him.   
  
“Ass,” he murmured fondly, not to wake the other man – although at this point House was so far gone that would have been hard to do.  He spent a few moments arranging the slumbering diagnostician along the length of the couch, then clicked off the office light, turned off the ringer on his desk phone and silenced his cell before carefully closing the blinds and locking the office door.  A small desk lamp, angled so the light didn’t fall on the couch, was enough for him to work by.  It was already nearly 5 p.m.; with any luck, House would be able to sleep at least until the janitors arrived to start cleaning for the night, at which point Wilson could take him home.    
  
Crap, that reminded him – Sam.  She’d be expecting him; he’d better call.  Quietly he slipped out onto the balcony.    
  
“Hey, it’s me,” he said, when she answered.  “Look, I don’t know when I’m going to get home tonight, but it looks like it’ll be pretty late.  Go ahead and do whatever you want for dinner; I’ll get something here.”  
  
“Oh, honey, we had those reservations at Francisco’s tonight.”  
  
“I’m so sorry, Sam.  But I’ve got something here I can’t leave.  Maybe tomorrow night?  See if they can change the reservations for us.”   
  
She sighed.  “Okay.  See you when you get home, baby.”  
  
“Thanks, Sam.  See you then.”  
  
He rang off and stood thinking for a few minutes.  It was better – much better – not to tell Sam exactly what the “something” was that was keeping him late tonight.  She and House seemed to have worked out some sort of truce since House had started dating Cuddy, but it was still something Wilson didn’t quite trust – whenever the two of them were in the same room he always felt keyed up, as if he had to be ready to jump in between them at any moment, which was why he’d finally decided he couldn’t live with both of them in the same space. To be fair, House had said some pretty unforgivable things to Sam at the outset.  But the more Sam learned about Wilson’s long-term friendship with House, the more she seemed to resent him.  Wilson had finally just given up on talking to her about House at all. If he had to explain that he was staying late to take care of House tonight . . .    
  
 _When the woman who’s ostensibly his girlfriend seemingly can’t be bothered to so much as call him on the phone once a day to check on him!_   Wilson thought, and his indignation at Cuddy flared up again.  He’d supported House when he decided to pursue her – he’d even thought the relationship would do his friend a lot of good.  Now,  familiar from long experience with what looming disaster in a relationship looked like, he was starting to see it looming over House.  And he wasn’t sure what, if anything, he could do to help avert it.  
 _  
Maybe there isn’t anything I can do.  Maybe I’ll just have to be here to pick up the pieces.  God knows he’s done that for me over the years.  Even if he pretended he didn’t care, he still managed to be there, in his own way.  The least I can do is return the favor if he needs it._  
  
Thinking about this, he pulled open the door to his office and went back in.  House was still asleep, soundly enough that he’d started snoring, and Wilson walked around his desk to look at him.    
  
High-maintenance.   _Yeah, no kidding,_ he thought to himself.   _Not the best relationship choice for someone who already has a toddler and a demanding job.  Really, she was better off with Lucas as far as that goes._   House shifted a little on the sofa, his snores quieting down to the slow, heavy breaths of deep slumber.   _Did she really think he’d change so much he’d go from being House to – to not being House?_  Wilson gave a mental sigh.   _Maybe she did.  People can persuade themselves into believing all sorts of things.  I believed I could make it work again with Sam –_  
  
He froze.  _No.  No, I believe I can make it work again with Sam.  It’s . . . working . . . so far.  I just have to get through this – this rough patch.  I can do it.  Now that I know it’s not Cuddy I was . . . interested in, things will go back to normal, and I won’t have to worry about hurting Sam or House.  _  
  
He focused on House again, noticing with a kind of abstract tenderness that the diagnostician was drooling slightly as he slept, that his hair was even more wildly rumpled now than it had been earlier, that the scrubs he was wearing were wrinkled and creased.   _He looks like that “before” picture I put into the frame,_  Wilson thought with affectionate amusement.   _He looks . . .  like the House I know.   It’s weird, but I miss him like this.  Not – I don’t miss him being unhealthy, it’s just . . ._  
 _  
I miss having him need me.  I miss . . . taking care of him this way._  
  
Softly, he moved back to his desk and sat down to work in the small, focused pool of light from his lamp.  
  
* * * * *   
  
An hour and a half went by as he dealt with spreadsheets and statistics; then he spent another two hours on the paper he was writing for the _American Journal of Clinical Oncology_.  By now it was nearly nine o’clock, and he finally had to admit that much as he hated to do it, it was time to wake House and take him home.  Quietly, he got up and stretched, adjusted the lamp to illuminate more of the room, then moved to stand next to the couch, looking down at his friend.    
  
Sleep was about the only time House ever seemed truly at ease.  There always a tension about him when he was awake, a restlessness even when he was theoretically relaxing – Wilson had long since decided that it was because the man could never stop thinking, never cease asking questions, looking for answers, observing, speculating, hypothesizing.  Only sleep and drugs could ever shut down the racing engine of House’s mind, and now that drugs weren’t an option any more, sleep was his only relief – which made his too-frequent bouts of insomnia all the more unfair.    
  
They weren’t much fun for anyone living with him, either, Wilson thought ruefully, remembering more than a few nights he’d spent pretending to be asleep on House’s sofa while the other man limped up and down the room, first trying to be quiet and then eventually giving up and prodding Wilson with his cane until Wilson “woke up” and kept him company.  At first the oncologist had resented this – until he came to realize that whiskey and  drugs would be House’s next choice.   How did Cuddy cope, Wilson wondered.  Bad enough to have a baby, but to add an insomniac partner with pain issues into the mix . . .     
  
Of course, she had an option Wilson really didn’t.    
  
Not that he hadn’t  _considered_  it, at times.  Not as if he and House hadn’t . . . come close to the edge of that . . . possibility, on nights when both of them were a bit too drunk, a bit too turned on by a porn flick, a bit too lonely.  He remembered, vividly, House resting a hand on his thigh as they watched a particularly lurid sex scene, his grip slowly tightening as the action progressed, Wilson feeling suspended, stretched between the writhing, moaning forms on the screen and the immediate intensity of House’s touch.    
  
But that had been the only time.  It had gone no further, and they had never talked about it.  He’d started dating Julie soon afterwards.  
  
And it was late, and getting later, and he had to get his friend home, and go home himself.  Whimsically, he reached out and brushed a hand through the tousled dark hair of the man on the couch.  “Hey.  Time to wake up, Prince Charming.”  
  
House’s face worked, he drew a breath, then opened his eyes, their color still startling even in the semi-darkness of the office.  Seeing Wilson standing over him, he smiled drowsily.   “Mmmmm. Thought for a minute you were – ” Then he broke off as he came more fully awake.  “Wha’ time ’sit?”  
  
“Just after nine.  I think I need to get you home before you put down roots and become a permanent part of the office decor, here.”  He offered a hand to help the other man up.  
  
House, still sleepy, smiled again.  He had a beautiful smile when he was like this, Wilson thought, drowsy and easy, with his guard down and his blue eyes gazing bright and warm into Wilson’s.  He reached out, and Wilson grasped his arm and pulled him to his feet, steadying him with a hand on his shoulder.  House swayed, and smiled again, and Wilson felt his heart unexpectedly turn itself completely inside out.  
  
Dark hair.  Smile.  A warm body close to his own.   
  
The repressed details of his several weeks’ dreaming suddenly came back in a flood.  Not Cuddy.  Not some anonymous brunette woman.    
  
House.  
  
 _This_  was why he’d felt so jealous at lunch that day,  _this_  was why he was so angry at Cuddy, so worried about how she was treating the other man.   _This_  was who he’d been wondering about, wanting, craving in dreams and trying to avoid craving in reality.  How had he managed to stay so blind for so long?  
  
And what the  _hell_  was he going to do now?  
  
* * * * *   
  
He shoved his feelings as far down inside himself as they would go, carefully let go of House and handed him his cane,  and managed somehow or other to behave more or less normally:   going with House back to the Diagnostics Conference Room for his backpack and the clothes he’d finally exchanged for the scrubs earlier in the week, then to the elevator and out to the parking lot.  House was still obviously tired, but a nearly four-hour nap, plus the uplift that came with the successful conclusion to his case, made him able to stay awake on the ride home.  He was also hungry again, so Wilson pulled into a drive-through on their way and got him a combo meal which was gone well before he turned into House’s street and found parking near 221B.    
  
“Coming in?”  House inquired through a yawn as he unlocked the door.   
  
Wilson followed him inside, but only far enough to set down the backpack and the dirty clothes.  “Can’t,” he answered, hoping he didn’t sound too relieved.  “Sam’s been expecting me home for hours now – I called to tell her I’d be late, but I don’t think she expected me to be  _this_  late.  Besides, you’re just going to sack out and sleep again – or at least that’s what you  _should_  be doing.”  
  
“There’s always the sofa,” House suggested.  “If Sam’s going to be mad at you, you might as well give her something to be really mad about.”  He yawned again and put out a hand to brace himself against the wall.  
  
 _God, if he only knew just how tempting that offer is.  I have got to get out of here._  “Gee, thanks,” he said, striving for a normal tone.  “I’ll suggest that to  _you_  the next time Cuddy gets upset.”  Wilson smiled a little to take the sting out of the words.  “Go to bed, House, before you end up sleeping on the floor out here.  I’ll call you in the morning.”    
  
Surprisingly, that got him another rather sweet, drowsy smile.  “No you won’t.  You – ” he yawned for a third time – “know me too well.”  
  
“Right. Afternoon, then.  Good  _night_ , House.”  
  
“ ’Night.”  But House stood for another few seconds, just looking at him with an expression more pensive than sleepy.  “Thanks,” he said at last.  
  
“Sure.  What are friends for?”  He had to suppress the impulse to reach out and touch the other man.  Instead, he turned to go.    
  
“Wilson.”   
  
“Yes?” the oncologist replied, looking back over his shoulder.  
  
“ . . . Nothing.  Good night.”    
  
House turned abruptly and limped towards his bedroom.  Wilson watched him go, noticing as he did that the message light on House’s phone was flashing.  He thought for a moment about calling after the other man to let him know, then shrugged.   _Probably just Cuddy_ , he told himself, and closed the door quietly behind him.  
  
* * * * *  
  
He put the car into gear and drove around the corner from House’s place, then parked again and sat, staring ahead of himself.  He wanted to sit and laugh at the insane situation he was in until he lost his mind, because that was probably coming next.  He wanted to get out of the car and walk for miles, just walk and walk until he’d walked away from all of this.  He wanted to find a bar somewhere and drink himself maudlin.  He wanted to go home and make passionate love to Sam.  He wanted to go back to House’s place and watch him sleep, and marvel again at how he’d managed to miss something suddenly so perfectly obvious for so long.  And he wanted to do them all at once, which was why he was sitting here, just sitting in the car until one or another of the things he wanted managed to overpower the others.  He couldn’t even call what he was doing thinking, because what thoughts he had kept going around in circles and then spinning away in random directions.  
  
In the meantime, his heart was off on its own, glowing and crackling like a bright, clear fire, warming him all through.  He’d never felt more deeply or intensely in love.   
  
In love with House.  
  
Who was in love with Cuddy.


	3. Ends and beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New things can come from old ones.

  
It was after ten-thirty when Wilson let himself quietly into the loft.  Sam was still awake, working at her computer in the den, which she had taken over as her personal office space.  She didn’t look up when he entered the room, and he sighed to himself.  She was definitely unhappy at his late return home.  
  
“Hey,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek.  “I’m sorry I’m so late, sweetheart.  Did you have any luck changing the reservations?”    
  
“I didn’t try.”  Her tone was icy.    
  
He would have to feel his way carefully across that ice, he realized.  “I’ll call tomorrow, then.  Or is there another restaurant you’d like instead?”  He stroked her hair gently;  she jerked away and looked at him with angry eyes.  
  
“Stop it, James.  I’m not in the mood, all right?”  
  
He stepped back a little, raising his hands placatingly.  “Sam, all I can do is apologize again.  We’re both doctors, you know how it can be.  I’m really, really sorry we missed the restaurant tonight.  What can I do to make it up to you?”  
  
She kept glaring at him for another few seconds, then her eyes dropped and her lips thinned into a taut, straight line.  Abruptly she stood up, turning the computer screen to face him.  “You can read this,” she told him, and stalked past him out into the loft’s great room.  
  
Confused, he looked after her, then turned back to the screen.  He read the words once, then a second time, but they seemed to make no sense.  Then, after the third reading, it was as if things suddenly jumped into focus.  
  
She was – leaving?   Moving out?   But –   
  
He spun and hurried out of the den to find her standing in front of one of the windows, her arms folded, staring out at the dark city.  
  
“Sam!  Sam, I don’t understand.  What –  _why??_   What is it?  We – ”  
  
“We.”  She cut him off bitterly.  “Yes,  _we_.  You, and me, and the other one, whoever she is.”  
  
Shock left him unable to speak for a few seconds.  Then he recovered his voice.  “ _What?!?_   Sam, there  _isn’t_  any other one!”  As soon as he said the words he realized the lie.      
  
“Oh, bull, James!  Don’t.  Just don’t.  You come in here late, I haven’t been able to reach you at your office, or on your cell phone, or – or even at House’s place, so it’s obvious you’ve been somewhere you don’t want me to know about.  And it’s not like I haven’t wondered –  you’ve been so affectionate lately, extra sex, making me coffee every morning, hoping I won’t figure it out!  That package that came the other day – I never saw what was in it, so whoever it was for, it wasn’t for me. It was just like this the other time, James. I can tell what’s going on, I’m not a fool.”  
  
Wilson stood gaping.  Two hours ago he could have protested his innocence with complete sincerity.  Now, although everything that had happened was just as completely innocent as it had been, the change in his own emotions made the end result the same.  Sam was wrong and yet  she was right.  And oh, god, he needed to sit down somewhere and laugh at the incredible irony of all of this.  
  
He gathered his thoughts and tried to deal with just the immediate issue.  “I have not been cheating on you!   There is no – no ‘other woman’.  I stayed late at the hospital because House had a case he just couldn’t solve until tonight, and by the time he figured it out he was so exhausted I almost had to carry him into my office and put him on the couch in there.  I called you to let you know I’d be late, and I stayed and worked while he slept for a few hours.  I turned off my phones because I didn’t want to wake him up.”  
  
“And I don’t believe that for a minute, because Lisa said you told her you were taking him home.”  
  
“ _After_  I got some food into him!  He hadn’t eaten in almost three days!”  
  
“Does it occur to you that maybe that should be  _Lisa’s_  problem, not yours?”  
  
He drew a deep breath, his earlier outrage at Cuddy sweeping over him again.  “Yes, Sam, it  _does_  occur to me.  It also occurs to me that she’s  _not doing anything_  about it!   She didn’t even know he’d been going without sleep or food for the past seventy-two hours because she was too busy with her job and her child to check on her lover, who is also her  _employee!_     _Someone_  had to help him, and it obviously wasn’t going to be her, so I stepped in.”   _As usual._     
  
She began to interrupt, but he continued to speak, overriding her.  “As for what was in the package, it was something I bought to play a prank on House with, and it’s on my desk at work right this minute.  Sam, I can’t  _prove_  I’m not cheating on you – nobody can prove he’s  _not_  doing something.  But all this – this ‘evidence’ you’ve put together, it’s just  _wrong_.  I’ve been completely faithful to you, Sam, and I can swear to that.”   
  
She looked at him for a moment, then turned her head away, staring out the window again.  “I wish I could believe you, James,” she said quietly.  “But . . .”  
  
“You can,” he told her, moving to stand behind her with his hands on her shoulders.  “There’s no other woman I want, Sam – ”  _At least that part’s true,_  “ – and I want us to work.  Please, don’t leave.”  
  
“I just . . . don’t know what to do,” she said unhappily.  She was still tense, not willing to relax into his touch.    
  
He leaned in to nuzzle at her hair.  “Stay,” he half-whispered.  “Please, Sam.”    
  
He felt her tension ease just a little, and pulled her closer against him.  “All right,” she said at last.  “But, James, really.  I know it’s a habit, but you need to let Lisa take care of House now.”  
  
There was a profound flinch inside him at the sound of House’s name.  He controlled it carefully, brought his hands around to cup her breasts.  “Maybe you’re right.”   
_  
I can’t have the one I want.  I can at least try to want the one I have._  
  
* * * * *   
  
_  
Things like this,_ Wilson thought to himself a few days later,  _things like this are why people end up believing in karma, or divine retribution, or nemesis, or whatever.  You just feel sure the gods are up there somewhere laughing their balls off at you._  
  
He’d called House early on Saturday afternoon (because he’d promised he would, not for any other reason, he assured himself), to see how he was doing.  House had answered sounding harried and distracted – he was at the grocery store, he explained, because Rachel needed juice and diapers, and Cuddy had now succumbed to the flu herself.    
  
Concerned, Wilson had offered help, only to be cut off with a snarl from the other end of the phone. “I’m a doctor, idiot, I know what to do for a case of the fucking flu, all right?  Do you know why these stores can’t just keep all the juice in one place?  I don’t see any of those damned little boxes anywhere. Put that  _down_.”   A wail from the background had announced that the other man was not alone on his shopping expedition; Wilson had repressed a smile at the image of House prowling the aisles of a vast suburban supermarket with a toddler strapped into a shopping cart.  
  
“If you’re in the refrigerated section, you won’t find them there.  Look for a sign on the aisles someplace that says ‘juice’, they’ll be with the canned stuff.”    
  
“Got it.  Thanks.”  
  
“And don’t let Cuddy hear you using language like that around Rachel.”  
  
The snarl was repeated, and House had rung off without further comment.  
  
Neither House nor Cuddy were in to work on Monday, but on Tuesday House re-appeared, walking in through the doors just as Wilson was signing out from that morning’s Clinic shift. He was dressed in jeans, a Black Sabbath concert shirt and a blue long-sleeved button-down.  Wilson blinked at him in exaggerated surprise, getting a scowl from the other man in response.  The two of them headed for the elevators, House limping a bit more heavily than usual.  Wilson took care to walk next to him as casually as he normally would.  
  
Once inside the elevator, he opened his mouth only to be cut off by a glare from the diagnostician.  “First of all, she’s not coming in today.  Second, I didn’t have time this weekend to nurse her, watch the baby,  _and_  do laundry, so I didn’t have anything clean left at her place.  As soon as the backup-backup babysitter got there this morning I went home to change.”  
  
“And that’s fine,” Wilson assured him, “except that I wasn’t going to say anything about your clothes.”  
  
“Well, you were going to say  _something_.”  
  
“Yes, along the lines of ‘Hi, House.  How are Cuddy and Rachel this morning?’ ”   
  
“Cuddy’s still in bed with the flu, and Rachel’s . . . underfoot.”    
  
“Ah.  That was going to be my next question.”  
  
“She came flying out of her room just as I was leaving the kitchen.  I twisted an ankle trying to avoid running into her.  I suppose I’m just lucky it was the right ankle and not the left one.”  
  
“Ouch.”  
  
“Yeah.”  House shifted a little, leaning harder on his cane.  “So . . . how’s Sam?” he asked, just as the doors opened on the fourth floor.    
  
“Great.  I surprised her on Saturday, we drove up to Connecticut and did a tour of some of the wineries.  Stayed at a Bed and Breakfast place, all that kind of thing.”  Wilson had found the quaint decor of the Bed and Breakfast (one with a relentless emphasis on quilts) a bit overdone, but Sam had been charmed.  The Sunday breakfast had been superb, though, and the wineries had been enjoyable for both of them.  
  
“You sure domesticate fast,” House grumbled as they stood in the corridor.  
   
“Says the man who was pushing a shopping cart around Wegman’s in search of juice boxes on a Saturday afternoon.”  
  
House scowled at him, then changed the subject.  “Can we do lunch today, or have you got plans?”  
  
“Sure.  Sam has something going on this afternoon, so lunch is fine.”  He smiled easily at the other man.  
  
“Good.  Because I – ” he broke off as Foreman stepped out of the Conference Room.    
  
“House, get in here.  We’ve got a case – 43-year-old male with recurring abdominal pain, fever, skin lesions.”  
  
“Could be anything.  Quit holding back the interesting stuff.”  
  
“Blue sclerae.”  
  
“Definitely interesting.  In fact, interestingly definitive.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I know what it is.”  
  
“You can’t,” Foreman said impatiently.  “You haven’t even looked at the file.”  
  
“Tell me about it at lunch, House,” Wilson interrupted.  House nodded at him, and he headed for his office.  
  
He closed the door behind him and leaned against it with a relieved sigh.  He’d known it would be difficult to keep up the pretense of a normal relationship with House; he just hadn’t expected how difficult it would be.    
  
Over the weekend, he had come to the conclusion that the best thing for all of them was for him to go on as if nothing had happened.  House was happy with Cuddy, and – and if he loved House (and he did), then the other man’s happiness had to be paramount with Wilson.   As for himself and Sam – he did care about her; he didn’t want to hurt her.  She wouldn’t ever have to worry about him straying again:  the only person he wanted to stray to was unavailable and going to stay that way.  He could be . . . content with Sam.  He could keep the friendship with House, even if it was painful now that he wanted more.  He could grit his teeth and choke down the bitter jealousy that he knew would well up in him whenever he saw Cuddy with House; he’d just focus on House and his obvious pleasure in having someone to love.  It would do.  It would have to do.   
  
If only just looking at House didn’t make him feel as if he’d had a – a loving punch in the gut, if there could be such a thing.  Every time he saw the man, his midriff turned to water.  He just wanted to stare at him, stare and then to touch, and then –   
  
_**No!**_  
  
After awhile he was able to sit down at his desk and get to work.  If he kept looking at the couch and then at the framed double picture on his desk, it was only to rest his eyes every few minutes.  
  
* * * * *   
  
  
“So,” he said to House a few hours later, “was it what you thought?”  
  
House disgustedly pulled three pickle spears away from his sandwich and tossed them onto Wilson’s platter, snatching a handful of fries in exchange.  “Sure.  Recurrent hereditary polyserositis.”  
  
“Of course,” Wilson agreed blandly.  “Any first-year med student could have caught that one.”  
  
“Don’t laugh.  You might be at risk yourself.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Recurrent hereditary polyserositis,” House said patiently, “also known as Familial Mediterranean Fever.  Rare, but not unknown, especially in people of Mediterranean or Jewish descent, although it seems to be more common among the Sephardic Jewish population.  Episodes of fever, abdominal, chest, and joint pain; males may experience orchitis.  Usually shows up first in childhood, but for some reason this guy had an unusually late onset:  didn’t show any sign of it until age 43.  The blue eyeballs also are normally something you’re more apt to see in kids, so it’s not all that surprising that someone unfamiliar with it wouldn’t recognize the symptoms in an adult. No treatment except palliative care, the patient usually gets better within three to five days anyway.  Until the next time.”  
  
“No cure.”  
  
“Nope, it’s hereditary.  Uncomfortable, not usually fatal.”  
  
“So now you have no patient again.  I don’t suppose you’re going to work on whittling down your Clinic hours?”  
  
“Bite your tongue.  _I_  am going to enjoy the peace and quiet of my office, free from crying toddlers and flu patients who don’t know when to rest.  I might even get caught up on my Farmville game for – ” He broke off and reached for his phone.  Wilson, recognizing the tune as the one House used for calls from Cuddy, gave a small shrug of sympathy.  
  
The conversation on House’s end consisted largely of monosyllables, but it was clear he wasn’t thrilled with whatever his lover was telling him.  At last he said, “Fine.  Let me just finish eating lunch and I’ll be there in half an hour,” closed the phone, and sat looking into space for a moment with his lips pressed together before taking up his sandwich and biting into it savagely.  
  
“So . . . no peace and quiet?”  Wilson ventured, when House kept chewing without saying anything.  
  
“No.  Apparently she doesn’t like the way the backup-backup babysitter is dealing with Rachel, so I have to go back there, send the woman home, and take over.”  
  
“Okay . . . I’d offer to come help, but . . .”  
  
“Yeah, after what happened that other time, Lisa’s decided that the two of us distract each other too much to be trusted in the same room at the same time with Rachel.”  House shoved the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and started to get up.  
  
“Good luck,” Wilson told him.    
  
“Yeah,” House said again.  “Thanks.  Look, Wilson, I – if I can get in here tomorrow, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”    
  
There was an odd intensity in House’s gaze; it was hard for Wilson to meet it and keep up the pretense of bland friendship.  He managed it anyway.  “All right,” he agreed.  “Just as long as you’re not looking for child-rearing advice.”  
  
House rolled his eyes and walked away, leaving his plate and tray for Wilson to clear from the table.  
  
* * * * *   
  
House wasn’t in on Wednesday, or on Thursday either.  Diagnostics had a case on Thursday, but House, after listening to the symptoms over the phone, snorted once and told his team they’d damned well better be able to figure this one out by themselves.  And in fact, it was only a matter of hours before Thirteen came up with the answer (Lupus).    
  
Meanwhile, Wilson focused on work and Sam, keeping his thoughts away from the empty office on the other side of his wall as much as he could.  The double picture of House was back in the bottom drawer of his desk, where he’d had to put it at last after realizing he was spending more time staring at it than he was working when he was alone in his office.  He’d pulled a particularly attractive photo of Sam from its place on one of his bookshelves and put it on the desk instead, after which he got a good deal more work done.  
  
They had plans to go to the theatre that night, so Wilson was careful to leave work a few minutes early to give himself plenty of time to shower and change at home.   Sam was running late; her car wasn’t in its usual space in the basement parking garage.  He parked his own car and headed up in the elevator.  
  
As soon as he walked through the door he knew something was wrong, but it took him a minute to figure out what.  Then he saw that the small knick-knacks and personal items Sam had gradually scattered around the place were gone.  Stupidly, his first thought was that there had been some sort of burglary, and he wandered through the great room and into the den, noting in a kind of dazed shock that Sam’s computer was gone, too, along with all the stacks of paperwork she kept next to it.  
  
By the time he found the note on their bed, the truth had sunk in.  
  
         _James –  
            I tried, I really did.  But this just isn’t working  
            for me.  I’m sorry.    
                                                    Sam_  
  
He called her number, already knowing she wouldn’t answer, then sat on the bed holding the note.    
  
Sam.    
  
Gone.    
  
He had a sudden, powerful impulse to call House, to ask if he could just . . . just come over for awhile, be somewhere that wasn’t  _this_  place, this scene of his latest relationship failure.  Then he caught himself.  House was most likely over at Cuddy’s, taking care of her and Rachel.  And even if he wasn’t, for Wilson to run to him for solace this time was a bad, bad idea.  
  
But he couldn’t stay here.  He just . . . couldn’t.  And going to a bar to get drunk would end up with him thinking that it would be a great idea to call House, and where a conversation might go at  _that_ point didn’t bear thinking of.   Going out just to wander around was pathetic; he could go find a hotel room somewhere, but that was just stupid.  
  
That left him with only one place to go.  
  
* * * * *   
  
He set down his bag and laptop case and stepped over to the window to close the blinds. Then he stood and looked around his office for a moment.  Yes, this was exactly what he needed: someplace familiar, comfortable, yet not associated with Sam in any way.  He pulled off his coat and hung it up, then opened his case and pulled out a change of clothes for tomorrow, along with a small traveler’s alarm clock which he set on the desk.  He opened the bottom drawer of one of the file cabinets and took out the thermal blanket he’d kept there for years, ever since Tritter had left him with nowhere else to sleep.  He left it folded at one end of the couch, opened up the laptop and logged into the hospital’s public wi-fi link.    
  
There was no email from Sam; not that he’d expected any, really.  He logged on to his Facebook page and carefully, deliberately removed her from his Friends list. He hesitated for a moment over whether or not to block her completely, but then decided that he wasn’t quite ready for that yet.    
  
At a loss for anything else to do, he went to Google’s news page and read article after article, not really taking in much of what he read.  The thought occurred to him that Google was just like every other news source – what you really wanted to know was never there.  Even the most sophisticated search engine would bog down if he tried to ask it the questions he needed answers for right now.  
  
He tried watching the latest episode of  _NCIS_  on Hulu, but the plot and the characters seemed unreal, the dialogue stiff and wooden, and it didn’t hold his interest.  Finally he gave up, shut down the laptop, stripped down to t-shirt and briefs, set his alarm and stretched out on the couch.  He pulled the blanket over himself, carefully keeping his mind away from the last person who’d slept here.    
  
He’d expected to lie awake for hours, fretting –  but he’d barely closed his eyes before sleep pulled him down and far away from memories and loss and loneliness.  
  
* * * * *   
  
  
“Wilson.   _Wilson_.”  
  
He smiled.  If he couldn’t have House, he could dream about him.  And now there was no reason not to enjoy it.  He didn’t want to open his eyes, because he knew if he did that, House wouldn’t really be there.    
  
“Wilson.  Wake up.”  
  
House sounded urgent, as if something important was going on.  But Wilson wasn’t going to be fooled – the longer he kept his eyes closed, the longer the dream would last.  
  
"Oh, for fuck sake.   _Wilson!_ "    
  
Someone was grabbing him, shaking him.  He screwed his eyes tight and whined in protest, throwing an arm across his eyes to block out the light.  
  
Light?  His office had been dark.    
  
Shit!  He must have slept through the alarm.  Oh, god, and here he was on his office couch in nothing but his underwear and a blanket.  He groaned and forced his eyes open.  
  
House loomed over him, his face drawn with worry.  Wilson blinked at him, then at the clock on the desk.  3:27.   He hadn’t missed the alarm.  What the hell was House – ?  
  
What the  _hell_ was House doing here?  
  
“House?  Wha’ is it?”  
  
“You tell me, asshole.  I got a call from Sam around nine o’clock; it went to voicemail.  I didn’t listen to it until almost midnight, and it didn’t make any sense at first, but I finally figured out that she was at a bar somewhere, drunk, calling to tell me she’d left you and I might want to go pick up the pieces.  Only problem was that when I got to your place there weren’t any pieces to pick up.  You weren’t there – do you know you forgot to lock the door when you left?”  
  
Wilson sat up, yawning.  “I did?  That was stupid.”  
  
“Yeah.  It also scared the piss out of me.  You’re usually Mr. Obsessive when it comes to locks; I thought – ” He broke off.  “Well.   I’ve been looking for you.  Every bar near your place, your old hotel – I even went over to Cuddy’s in case you’d shown up there.  You weren’t anywhere.  I was going to start calling the jails when it finally occurred to me you might be here.”   
  
He walked around the desk and sat down rather limply in Wilson’s chair.  The lines of anxiety around his eyes were starting to ease a little.  “I’m getting too old for this kind of thing.”  
  
“I . . . I’m sorry,” Wilson told him.  “I had no idea . . . it never crossed my mind that Sam would call you.”  
  
“I’m not blaming you; I just . . . I had to find you.  You’ve been working so hard to make a go of it with her, I was . . . scared.”  The last word came out so softly it was barely audible.  “If . . . if you had done something . . . stupid . . . it would have been my fault.”  The worry on House’s face was overshadowed now by guilt.  Wilson stared at him, still not really awake, certainly not able to make sense of what the other man was saying.  
  
“House, what are you talking about?  It’s not _your_  fault Sam decided to leave me.  If it’s anyone’s fault, then obviously it’s mine.”  
  
“No.  You loved her.  You  _trusted_  her.  I never trusted her, not from the first day.  But I’ve been . . . busy.  I didn’t follow up on things the way I would have if I hadn’t been distracted.”  
  
“What?  What things?  This whole conversation is making no sense at all.”  
  
House caught his upper lip between his teeth and worried at it for a moment, his eyes not meeting Wilson’s.  Then he said, “Look.  I’ll admit it.  I never liked her.  I knew what she’d done to you before, and people don’t change.  She’s the same bitch who hurt you back then, and I knew she’d do it again if she had the chance.  She was good at hiding it for awhile, because she knew I was watching her.  But then, like I said, I got . . . distracted.  Finally she thought I wasn’t watching, and she got overconfident.”  
  
Wilson simply sat, unsure where any of this was going.    
  
“You know those two nights last month when she told you she was going to be late getting home?  She was seeing someone else.”  
  
Wilson sat up with a jerk.  “How – how do you know that?  Did you . . . not  _Lucas_  . . .”  He realized as he said it how ridiculous the idea was.  
  
House scowled.  “No.  This was what I wanted to talk to you about.  I kept trying to tell you, but . . . we never got to it.  I saw them."  
  
“You  _what?_ ”  
  
“Here.”  House had switched on the computer screen at Wilson’s desk and turned the terminal to face the oncologist; now he typed a series of commands into the keyboard and the wide-screen monitor suddenly split into a set of smaller views.  “These are the security camera images for the hospital –  the live views from the terminal at the remote security desk.”  
  
“Should we even be looking at this?” Wilson asked, fascinated, but concerned.  
  
“I hacked into it ages ago; they’ve never figured it out.  But look at this.”  He typed more commands and the view changed to a grainy full-screen picture.  House muttered something under his breath and changed the screen resolution; the image became clearer.    
  
“This is the picture I got two weeks ago.  I recorded it and saved it to a separate file on the server.”  
  
Wilson watched as Sam came down what looked like . . .  “Is that the corridor behind Dispensing?”    
  
“Yeah.  The camera’s supposed to be watching for pharmaceutical theft, but it can see plenty of other things, too.”  
  
Sam had stopped as a man approached her from the other direction, his back to the camera.  Wilson could see her smile as she spoke to him.  Then, suddenly, they were kissing, wrapped in each other’s arms.  The kiss broke and he tugged her away, out of the camera’s view.  House switched back to the live images.  
  
“Who?” Wilson asked, through numb lips.   _Why couldn’t she just have told me?_  
  
“Do you really want to know?” House asked gently.  “What would you do to him?  He’s already quit, by the way.  Got a job offer in Houston; he’s moving out there Tuesday.”  
  
Wilson took a deep breath, let it out slowly.  “No.   No, I guess it . . . there wouldn’t be anything I could do.  She’s still . . . gone.  She wouldn’t come back.  We just couldn’t . . .”  His throat tightened, he looked away from the other man.  “ _I_ couldn’t.  No matter how hard I tried, I just . . . couldn’t be what she wanted.”    _And I can’t tell him that she’s not what I want anymore.  I can’t tell him that she was . . . was just a distraction._  
  
“Parallels,” House said then, under his breath, so softly that Wilson wasn’t sure he’d heard it.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing.”  House stood up.  “Look,” he said.  “If you’re going to sleep on a sofa anyway, then come over to my place for the rest of the night.  Unless – ” He hesitated.  “Maybe you’d rather not.  I . . . forgot for a minute.  You didn’t call me, I just . . . panicked when I got the message from Sam.”  He turned away and walked to the windows, moving a vertical blind aside to look out into the darkness.  
_  
God, he thinks I didn’t want to tell him.   He’s . . . hurt.  And I’ll never be able to tell him why I couldn’t tell him.  Not the real reason. _     
  
“I thought – ”   Wilson stood up, wrapping the blanket around himself and swallowing hard against the tightness in his throat.  “I thought you were still taking care of Cuddy and Rachel.  You . . . you had enough to deal with, you didn’t need my – personal drama on top of all the rest of it.”  
  
“Cuddy’s fine.  So’s Rachel.”  House let go of the blind, leaving it to swing back and forth like a pendulum.  He turned to face Wilson.  “But . . . you and I . . .”  
  
“We’re okay, House.  I mean – ”    
  
“I know.  But . . . we seem to be leading parallel lives, lately.”  
  
Wilson stared at him, puzzled.  Then he realized what House had to mean.  “You – ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
_“Why??”_   Wilson asked, “Why the hell would she – ”      
  
“Not her,” House said.  “Me.”  He turned around again, catching the swaying blind and easing it to a stop.  “I’ve realized I can’t be what she wants.  I’m not cut out for suburban fatherhood.  The harder I try, the worse I do at it.  It’s getting so the only place she and I agree on anything is in bed.  And that can’t be . . . all there is to it.  So I told her we needed to give it up while we could still work together.  We talked about it all day Wednesday, and she finally admitted I was right.”  
  
“God,” Wilson said.  “God, House.  I’m . . . I’m sorry.”  And he really was.  Thinking of the time, the effort, the  _hope_  that House had put into the relationship with Cuddy, he was overwhelmed with a sense of the unfairness of it all.    
  
“Yeah.”  House was still staring at the now motionless blinds.   Then he reached for the handle of the balcony door, and opened it, letting in a rush of cool, crisp autumn air as he stepped outside.  After a moment, Wilson followed him, and they stood side by side, leaning on the parapet, looking out over the hospital grounds and listening to the sounds of traffic muted by the darkness of the early morning.  For several minutes, neither of them said anything.  
  
Finally, House pushed away from the balcony and turned around.  “You know what really sucks about parallel lives?” he asked, limping away a few steps and stopping.  
  
“A lot of things,” Wilson said tiredly.  The balcony was cold under his bare feet, cold air was seeping under the blanket.  He was weary and chilled.    
  
“Yeah, but the worst part is that things that are parallel never meet up,” House told him, still facing away.       
  
From being cold, Wilson went to a near fever heat in seconds.   _Does he mean – ?  He can’t._  
  
But even the hope of it seemed to be igniting a wildfire in him.  
  
“House?” he said, taking a few steps toward the other man.  House didn’t move.  Wilson stepped closer still, close enough to touch House, if he wanted to.  “Maybe we’re not . . . parallel.  Maybe – maybe we’re converging.”   He reached out, greatly daring, and put a hand on House’s arm.    
  
Slowly, House turned his head, just enough to look at Wilson. The two of them stood there, caught in the moment, feeling it stretching on and on.  Then Wilson pressed, just a little, and House turned to face him, his face shadowed, but his whole posture eloquent of disbelief, fear – and hope.    
  
“Let’s go inside,” Wilson told him.  House nodded and reached behind him for the door, ushering Wilson in first and closing it after them.   Then he stood still, his face a carefully composed,  neutral mask.    
  
“You know,” Wilson said, his voice unsteady, his eyes on House’s blue ones, “when two converging lines reach the same point, they – ”   
  
“Shut up,” House said, and reached for him.  
  
The kiss was hard and fierce, no technique involved on either man’s part, just a gasping exchange of pent-up need.  Wilson dropped the blanket as House’s arms came around him, opened his mouth to the pressure of House’s lips, welcomed the tongue that invaded him.   _Yes. Yes.  God, he tastes so good, feels so good.  Is this real?  I can’t be dreaming this; I’ll die if I’m only dreaming this . . .  _He tightened his arms around House and the other man groaned aloud into his mouth.  “Christ, Wilson.  This – ”   
  
It was his turn to silence House now, and he did, resuming the kiss, pouring all of himself into it, biting at House’s lips, pushing with his tongue, reaching a hand up to the back of House’s head to hold him in place.  Letting House feel his need, how much he  _wanted_  the other man. Nearby, someone was moaning, loudly – it took him a moment to recognize the voice as his own.   He ran his hands over House’s body now, pulling at the t-shirt, then yanking when it didn’t come free of House’s jeans fast enough.    
  
Finally there was warm, smooth skin under his eager hands, oh god,  _yes_ , so warm, so soft, so  _perfect_.  He touched and touched, his palms sliding, stroking, his fingers tracing the lines of muscle and ribs and shoulder blades, a wealth of sensation, an entire world to discover, to explore.  House’s hands were making exploratory voyages of their own, sliding down suddenly into Wilson’s briefs to cup his ass and pull him close, closer to the bulge beneath the fabric at House’s groin.  Jeans.  House was still dressed; that had to change, had to change  _now_.  Wilson fumbled at the belt, undid it, unfastened the button at House’s waistband, ran the zipper down and plunged his hand in, heat and hardness and male musk, and House crying out and thrusting involuntarily against him, and House’s hand on him now, too, and House’s tongue still in his mouth and House’s free hand squeezing his ass in a steady, compelling rhythm, and  _god_ , this was good, so  _good_ , and suddenly they were on the couch, Wilson on his back, House’s mouth on his nipples through the fabric of his t-shirt, the wet roughness sending pulses of pleasure directly to his cock, making him buck up against House desperately, pleading in sharp cries, “Yes!  House!  God,  _yes!_   Please!” his hand pushing between them, finding hot, slick hardness, shoving cloth down and away, House’s mouth on his neck now, biting, House’s harsh breaths in his ear turning to groans as Wilson’s fingers found the tender scrotum, caressing, cherishing; House shifting awkwardly and Wilson immediately adjusting to let him take the weight off his bad leg; and then – then –   
  
“God!   _Fuck!_ ” as everything suddenly turned into perfect rhythm, slick heat against slick heat, their hands squeezing, pressing, their mouths locked hard together, whimpers and cries swallowed by each other’s throats, more,  _more_  – “Yes, god  _yes_ , House, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t – oh, god, don’t  _stop_  . . .” heat and tension and more heat and he was falling apart, knew he was close, knew House was close, tightened his grip, heard House cry out sharply  _Wilson!!_   -- no way to stop it now, bearing down on both of them, yes, oh, god, yes, yesyes _yes_  –   
  
A burst of brilliant light behind his eyes, a wail in his ears and House thrashing uncontrollably against him, hard pulses of liquid heat, and nothing called sex had ever been this good before, and then, impossibly, it was  _better_ , and the light went black and the last thing he was conscious of was House’s limp weight pressing him into the cushions of the couch.  
  
Convergence.    
  
* * * * *  
  
It was lucky, Wilson thought when the alarm went off, that House had thought to lock the office door behind him when he came in last night.


End file.
